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John MacDonald
"Instead of a dependent colony, Britain will have in us a cordially allied nation; though one people, two countries, a second in North America, to stand with her in peace or in war." - Sir John MacDonald 'Sir John Alexander MacDonald GCB KCMG PC QC (11, January, 1815 - 6, June, 1891) '''was a British author, banker, businessman, diplomat, lawyer, politician and soldier. During his career MacDonald served as a Member of Parliament, thirteenth Attorney General of Ontario, sixth Premier of Ontario, first Attorney General of Canada, eighteenth Minister of the United Kingdom to the United States of America, seventh Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, fourth Minister of Interior Affairs, thirteenth President of Her Majesty's Privy Council, third Minister of Transport and first Prime Minister of the Dominion of Canada. MacDonald's administration enshrined the Constitution of the Dominion of Canada, confederated the colonies of British North America as the Dominion of Canada, established the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Supreme Court of the Dominion of Canada, expanded the Dominion threefold it's original size, founded the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, implemented protectionist policies and trade tariffs to secure Canadian industries from American dominance, oversaw the construction of the Trans-Continental Railroad, practiced economic solidarity with the British Empire through preferential trade with Britain and suppressed rebellions by Irish-American Fenians and Metis nationalists against the Crown. MacDonald personally acted as Chairman of the Constitutional Conference of 1866, authored the Constitution of the Dominion of Canada, drafted the ''First Nations Act of 1876, establishing residential assimilation schools and land reserves for Beringian inhabitants of the region, ensured the country's economic sovereignty and ethnic homogeneity, established the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration, imposing taxation on Chinese foreign labourers, introduced the Manitoba Act of 1870, lead the Canadian delegation at the Washington Conference of 1871 and signed the Anglo-American Treaty of 1871. Biography John Alexander MacDonald was born to Hugh Macdonald, a merchant, and his wife Helen (born Shaw,) at Ramshorn Parish in Glasgow, Scotland on 11, January, 1815. He was the third of five siblings, including: William, Margaret, James and Louisa. In 1820, the MacDonald family migrated Kingston in the British colony of Upper Canada. Education John began his education as a student at the Midland District Grammar School in Kingston, and the private co-educational Academy of Kingston, studying arithmetic, English, geography, grammar, Greek, history, Latin and rhetoric. His formal education ended in 1830 and his family encouraged him to pursue a career in law, a field which he was well suited for as a result of his education in classical arts, typical for wealthy Britons in the Victorian era but often unavailable to the socioeconomic class MacDonald found himself in. In 1834, MacDonald traveled to Toronto to receive his first examination by the Law Society of Upper Canada, following which he began his clerkship at the law firm George Mackenzie in Kingston, occasionally managing the office while Mackenzie was traveling and on one occasion taking over the office of Lowther Macpherson, Mackenzie's cousin in Picton. Trivia * MacDonald was multilingual and fluent in English, Greek and Latin.